Flesh & St. Francis: Embodying an Asceticism of Joyful Kinship

Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical *Laudato Si’* reignited theological attention to conversations in *deep incarnation,* ecotheology, and Franciscan spirituality. In the face of the environmental crisis, calls for ascetic renunciation and divestment imply that solutions to the crisis reside in spiritualities of self-discipline and mastery. Yet, *Laudato Si’*s account of St. Francis of Assisi’s spirituality of asceticism suggests that the logic of self-mastery is tied to the mastery of others insofar as both involve displacing or diminishment. My paper contrasts an asceticism of mastery and necrophilia with an asceticism of kinship and joy in order to illuminate how St. Francis’s cosmic spirituality is oriented toward communal and ecological wholeness. Francis’s asceticism of kinship culminates in joyful healing and praise. In order to offer an account of St. Francis’s asceticism of kinship I explore *touch*points between *Laudato Si’*, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of sight and “flesh,” and Bonaventure’s cosmic Christology.